Rhino to Solidworks (frustration!)

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

I’ve been having no successes getting Rhino models into Solidworks in any meaningful fashion. Yes I can get them in using STP and even Parasolid X_T but the Solidworks users say they can’t do anything with the models. Even simple models come in and they can either extrude bosses but not holes or the other way around, which means they’ve been remodelling everything in Solidworks.

But the biggest frustration came today when I tried getting in lines (lines!) in 3D space representing the centerlines of trusses into Solidworks. I Simplified my lines, and used ‘R12 lines and arcs’ DXF export but the lines come in as ‘imported curves’ and Solidworks can’t use them as lines to extrude from! SO even the lines need to be redrawn to model simple extrusions in Solidworks!

I know I’m ranting here, and this is possibly more of a Solidworks issue than Rhino, as I can get Rhino objects cleanly into most other programs these days. I don’t know Solidworks so I don’t know if there are some import options/work arounds that can make things better.

I did speak to an Industrial Design colleage with 18 years experience and he said they’ve banned Rhino in their firm as it caused too many problems with Solidworks…

2

Hi Andrew - depending on the model, you may be able to get the SW feature recognition to do something useful in SW with a step file import. But, getting a full, ‘live’ model in SW is probably not the best way to use the two together. Replace Face is a good way to get single surfaces into an SW tree as an active object, for example. There’s some good stuff here from Phil Cook at Simply Rhino as well:

-Pascal